


Travel-Sized

by mirawonderfulstar



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Shapeshifting, Snake Crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 23:57:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17151437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirawonderfulstar/pseuds/mirawonderfulstar
Summary: Crowley tags along to a party he wasn't invited to and gets himself hurt in the process.





	Travel-Sized

**Author's Note:**

  * For [witching](https://archiveofourown.org/users/witching/gifts).



> short cute thing based on a post witching made on tumblr yesterday. tiny snek crowley is a good boy and i love him

“No, you absolutely can _not_ come to the Winter Gala at The British Library with me. I don’t even want to go myself, you know.” Aziraphale said distractedly, looking around the room for his tie.

Crowley twirled the bit of fabric between his fingers. “Then don’t.” He flicked it towards the angel, who let out a sound of relief before doing it up around his neck. “Skive off and we’ll go see a movie. Get some take-out.”

“Don’t try to tempt me, it won’t work.” Aziraphale was now rummaging in the drawer of his vanity for a pair of cuff links that Crowley was even now plucking out of thin air. “I’d rather spend the evening with you, of course, but I have specific instructions from Up There to attend this function, though goodness only knows why.” After closing the drawer and peering into one of the many boxes under the mirror, Aziraphale held a hand out wordlessly towards Crowley, who dropped the cufflinks (pearl, nearly 200 years old) into his palm.

“You look nice, anyway.” Crowley said, ungracious and a little irritated, but Aziraphale shot him a small smile anyway.

“Thank you, my dear.” The angel finished fussing with his clothes and peered around the room, patting the pockets of his vest. “You know I hate to shoo you out, but—”

“You _love_ to shoo me out,” Crowley said with a smirk, pressing a kiss to the angel’s cheek, “but it’s fine. I’ll leave you to your oh-so-important Heavenly duties. Come by the flat when you get done, yeah? I’ll save you something to eat.”

“You won’t but I appreciate the thought.” Aziraphale smiled back, and Crowley laughed as he headed out of Aziraphale’s bedroom and down the stairs to the main floor of the shop.

Crowley might have made it out to the street, gotten into the Bentley, and gone home to watch whatever was on telly while he ate takeout straight from the box if he hadn’t happened to glance at the chair behind the till and see a long winter coat Aziraphale sometimes wore. If he hadn’t looked, he wouldn’t have found himself thinking about the time he’d once seen Aziraphale put quite a thick leather-bound book into one of the pockets, followed by a second, followed by a package, like it was nothing. This coat had very large pockets, and Crowley was struck by several things at once.

Number one: he really didn’t want to go home and sit in his empty flat with only takeout for company. No matter how much time he spent with Aziraphale he never truly got sick of being with him, and recently Aziraphale had started to voice similar sentiments about spending time together.

Number two: if Heaven was sending Aziraphale on some sort of assignment and he didn’t want Crowley along it was entirely likely that he would be able to stir up some trouble simply by being there.

Number three: his snake form could fit in the pocket of that coat without leaving even a bulge or a weight for the angel to notice.

Quick as a flash Crowley had vanished his clothing and shifted into something small and slithery, which slinked across the floor and up the leg of the chair before dropping into the right pocket and curling up to wait. Several minutes later Aziraphale’s footsteps came down the stairs and he shrugged into the coat, and Crowley grinned to himself, comfortable and warm against the angel’s thigh.

At least, he was comfortable until Aziraphale made it out onto the street and it became apparent he was planning to walk to the British Library. Or when he reached a hand into his pocket looking for his gloves. Crowley just barely moved out of the way so his fingers wouldn’t brush against him as he pulled out the gloves and put them on.

It was a long twenty minutes from Soho to the library with Aziraphale’s body heat on one side and nothing but wool separating him from the cold night air on the other. Crowley found himself missing a human’s ability to shiver to keep oneself warm as they travelled; he didn’t want to move too much in case the angel noticed him. Once they were admitted to the gala and Aziraphale hung his coat up Crowley would get out and change back into a person, but until then he needed to remain unnoticed.

Unfortunately the cold tended to make his snake body slow and sluggish, and he found himself slipping out of consciousness. It took a very long time for the signals travelling to Crowley’s brain to register as movement, and even longer for him to put together that those signals meant Aziraphale was taking the coat off and hanging it up in the coatroom of the library. By the time he’d given himself a good shake and stuck his head out of the pocket to look around, Aziraphale was long gone, walked away to mill about the crowd and force himself to make small talk or whatever it was Heaven wanted him to do with his evening.

Crowley blinked at the bright light in the coatroom, sighing internally as he prepared to drop to the floor. There was no way around it since he couldn’t transform back into person-shaped from Aziraphale’s pocket, but the floor was almost certainly going to be cold, and he braced himself for it as he fell. Crowley wriggled for a moment, concentrating on fingers and arms and black clothes covering him, willing himself back into shape.

Or at least, he was doing when he heard a scream and felt a terrible pain as he was trampled on.

 _Shitshitshitshit_ , Crowley was thinking, panicking as he tried to focus through the pain and force himself back into human form. Something was broken, a lot of somethings, actually, and he couldn’t see out of his left eye anymore, and there was something slippery sliding along his midsection that he sincerely hoped was just blood and not the inner workings of this body splayed across the marble floor. There was a lot of jumbled sound happening, but Crowley couldn’t make any of it out over the more pressing matter of how badly he hurt and how frantically he was trying to shift back.

And then one particular voice rang out above the din, a familiar voice, absolutely horrified. “Crowley?”

 _Aziraphale!_ Crowley wanted to yell, but he hadn’t the mouth for it, so instead he turned his good eye to face the angel and blinked. Aziraphale’s expression hardened and he ran a hand down along Crowley’s body, healing him. Before Crowley could have a chance to try and change back into a person, though, Aziraphale had picked him up and tucked him into the breast pocket of his dinner jacket.

“You complete idiot.” He murmured, sounding somehow both irritated and relieved, and Crowley both felt and heard the rub of fabric as Aziraphale pulled his coat back on. “What on earth made you think a snake amidst a lot of London socialites wouldn’t end badly for you?”

Crowley, of course, couldn’t answer, but he poked his head out of the pocket as Aziraphale did up the buttons on his coat. The angel stroked a finger along the side of his head, like he was petting him, and Crowley knew he ought to feel patronized but the physical affection was actually very welcome after the scare he’d just had. He closed his eyes and let Aziraphale nudge him back into the pocket, which was a great deal warmer than the exterior pocket of the angel’s coat had been. “I suppose you’ve gotten what you wanted.” Aziraphale said with a sigh. “We’re going home.”

Crowley curled up protectively as they went, wanting very much to arrive as soon as possible so he could take inventory of his limbs and get a good look at himself in a mirror so he could heal any lingering bruises.

He’d all but gone to sleep when Aziraphale let himself into Crowley's flat and walked through to the bedroom, where he began undressing, draping articles of clothing over the foot of Crowley's bed and plucking Crowley out of the pocket at last. He held him for a moment, seeming to consider him, and then plopped him on his now bare shoulder. Crowley would have let out a squeak of surprise, had he been able, but as it was he merely wound his way around Aziraphale’s arm and settled on his wrist as he finished undressing and pulled a pair of his pajamas out of the chest of drawers. Then he sat down on the bed, one leg tucked up underneath him, and raised his wrist to look at Crowley more closely.

“You’re quite alright, my dear, you can change back any time.” He said, not unkindly, and Crowley stuck his tongue out. Aziraphale rolled his eyes but made no move to brush him away, so Crowley slithered off of him and under the sheets of the bed before willing himself back to human. He took a quick stock of himself and found, thankfully, everything where and in the condition it should be.

“Care to tell me what that was about?” Aziraphale asked in a weary tone, turning on the bed to face Crowley as he arranged the covers around himself.

“Nothing particularly.” Crowley responded cheerily. He gave Aziraphale a bright smile, and Aziraphale snorted. “Seriously though, I just followed an impulse to climb in your coat, there wasn’t any greater plan there.”

“You weren’t trying to get me to skip this event I was supposed to attend?” Aziraphale’s hand came up to rest on the back of Crowley’s neck, playing with the dark hair there.

“Well,” Crowley murmured, leaning forward and pressing a kiss to Aziraphale’s lips, “apart from that.”

"Hmm." Aziraphale hummed against his jaw. "Do you still want to get food?" 

"Not in any hurry." Crowley said on a gasp as Aziraphale pressed a soft kiss to his neck. 


End file.
